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harry potter - Why does Newt say Lumos Maxima in the Fantastic Beasts trailer?


At the beginning of the trailer for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, someone (who I think is Newt Scamander) says the spell "Lumos Maxima". The problem is that Lumos Maxima is not a canon spell. The spell that everyone uses in the books is Lumos. (Rowling has said "That's showbiz!" when asked about the movies versions of the spells.)


A fact that further complicated matters is that JKR said on Twitter that she "wrote the entire script".


So why does Fantastic Beasts have Lumos Maxima?


(An out of universe answer is fine, I'm more of trying to figure out where this movie stands canonwise than trying to mesh two incompatible things.)



Answer



As per OP's request I turned my comments into an answer, despite them being somwhat speculative.


The film series is of course an entirely seperate continuity from that of the books, and JKR was always okay with it being this way (films over there, books over here), her "That's showbiz!" comment can be intrepreted the same way.



Just like the books - and any franchise, really - the films try to establish their own continuity by repeating themes (particularly with the score / the music, which despite having been created by different composers, still kept central themes throughout).


This is done to interconnect each new installment with those that came before it and (hopefully) will come after.


Either the screenwriter incorporates those "threads" in his/her script from the start, or is asked to include them later.


Because since the early moments of the third film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban it has been established that within the canon of the film franchise Lumos Maxima exists, its inclusion in other installments simply uses that established fact.


In her book canon, JKR has never mentioned Lumos Maxima, so it's actually unknown whether it does exist there or not (she could after all very well write another book and establish it as book canon, the unlikelyness of that notwithstanding, since if that powerful a light could be produced someone in the previous books should have used it in a time of need).


Since we have not (yet) seen any script draft, nor the shooting script, nor a transcript, we do not know if she wrote Lumos Maxima into it.


Like all scriptwriters, she will have to live with the fact, that what was written is rarely that which appears on the screen later. The reasons for this are numerous, for instance




  • actors might chance things to make it feel "more natural for the character" (which the author of course created, usually for a reason, but alas);





  • the director,




  • the producer(s) (which in this case JKR is one as well, so maybe this influence may have been not as prominent, although Steve Kloves is also a producer - and a professional screenwriter - and since writing for the page differs from writing for film there were probably discussions there as well)




  • and most of all the studio give notes upon notes upon notes.





Particularly the last one applies in this case. WB are interested in keeping the interconnection within their franchise alive, so if they said "Put a Maxima in here", it went in.


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